Cecil B. DeMille's Madame Satan (1930) is a sophisticated MGM romantic comedy that tells the tale of Angela Brooks (Kay Johnson), a wealthy, married woman
whose husband Bob (Reginald Denny) stays out all night carousing with his friend
Jimmy (Roland Young) and carrying on with Trixie (Lillian Roth). When Angela,
who is rather staid and conservative, gets wind of Bob's antics, she insists that they
separate. He, in turn, justifies his adulterous behavior by claiming that while he
craves warm affection from her, all he gets is “frozen justice.” As he sardonically
remarks: “Love can't be kept in cold storage.” Upon learning that Jimmy will host
an extravagant costume party aboard a moored zeppelin, Angela decides to shed
her traditional demeanor and appear at the celebration as “Madame Satan,” a fictitious but provocative French femme fatale. On the night of the event, she arrives
at the high-tech site (designed by Cedric Gibbons and Mitchell Leisen) masked
and adorned in a revealing Art Deco evening gown (created by Adrian) whose
black, white, and silver flame appliqués barely cover her erogenous zones. Bob is
entirely captivated by this “hot,” mysterious, and outrageous woman who flirts with
him and seems eager to scandalize the gathering. Only when a storm hits and the
aircraft becomes untethered does Bob realize that the beguiling Madame Satan is
his allegedly frigid and inhibited wife. Clearly, in Madame Satan, the notion that
“the devil is a woman” is treated wryly—and Angela's Art Deco status only augments her appeal. But, as I shall demonstrate, when we turn to the more fantastic
films of the era—those of the horror, fantasy, or science fiction genres—the sense
of the demonic Art Deco Woman takes on a weightier and more dreadful valence.

Although her origins are literary and pictorial, the femme fatale has a special relevance in cinematic representation, particularly that of Hollywood insofar as it appeals to the visible as the ground of its production of truth.

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